Folly Beach 5

 

 

September 11, 2020

Read “Lycidas” out of my little Palgrave and for the first time understood it, for the first time comprehended its widely acknowledged greatness. All will come now that the pressure of professorship is passed.

I had not expected Middlemarch to be funny.

Felt close to Ann Dunn all week, perhaps because she so loves the shore.

Played in the surf a long time, on both sides of the pier. I was thinking strange thoughts. I don’t often swim in the sea, so perhaps it’s natural that my thoughts should be strange. Didn’t wear my glasses, so everything was blurry and brilliant and impressionistic. Children are best at knowing what to do with the rolling incessant waves. It was long, wet, lukewarm contemplation.

Folly Beach 4

 

 

September 9,2020

Rain through most of the night, misting sweet rain on the sand now. The virtual book festival went well last night, I think.  The observation I most want to make is that my book, or at least my reading, was best by levels of magnitude. Whether this is actually true or something I need to hear myself say is something for others to decide. Last year’s winner, my successor, is thin and full of complaint—like the author, I know now. This year’s, read in a thick Spanish accent trying to imitate a Southern drawl, was unintelligible. I’ll have to read it on the page, though I probably never will.  They sent a fourth book which wasn’t discussed, essentially a manual on body hair fetishism. I think the authors’ discussions they always have are probably pointless, though having said that, I realize I was inspired by it, and full of vigor for writing this rainy morning at the beach.

Long walk to begin the day. Sat under the pier and wrote. Met the pier caretaker and two people hunting sharks’ teeth in the surf. I tried not to think “you’re standing too close.” Saw my first boogieboard, and the use of such. Walked too much, came back after lunch at Rita’s over-tired and on the verge of sickness. It’s a new world for me physically, or there’s something I overlook.

 

Folly Beach 3

 

September 8, 2020

Cocktails last night at Loggerheads, which I liked. Sloppy sweet Southern ambiance, overcooked scallops, a good hillbilly singer.

Folly Beach 2

 

September 7, 2020

 

Labor Day. Toured the town on foot yesterday, discovering the twenty places you could buy T-shirts and the 0 places you could buy talcum powder, or a book. Lovely people in the stores, faces all masked by the plague.  Walked to the long pier, then went down to the sea to return by way of the breaking waves. Exhaustion, of course, but not so bad as I might have anticipated.

Vacation this time is to spend time planning gigantic meals, procuring the means of those meals, spending hours preparing and eating, lounging around after, mixing drinks until dark. I can see how this is restful and correct, especially in a place like the beach, contrasting though it does with my process of running from site to site grabbing a coffee as I go. There are no “sites” here but the sea. In olden days I could walk out to the marshes, but if I did I wouldn’t get back. Amy and I, on a trip to Walmart to buy food, saw spoonbills feeding in the marsh.

Zoom meeting about my play At Distance with Sips and Scripts last night was triumphant. They seemed to like the little plays in every possible way. One said she wished they had been written by a woman so she could include them in a women’s play fest she was organizing. It is the sort of group who would delight in finding faults if there were any, so, hurrah me.

Evening. Walked to and down the long pier, where people fish without apparent success, and grackles forage for the remnants of the fishermen’s sandwiches. Again to the pier with the group for cocktails. The cocktail lounge in open air apparently closes tonight, so those who love it blessed the timing. Much walking, followed by gigantic, irresistible naps.  I’m evidently intolerant of ambient sound—that is to say, of people playing recorded music all the time. I probably live a weirdly silent life measured by that of other people. I'd rather listen to the sea, while I have it. An adjustment to community living. Everyone is more watchful over the welfare of others than I. Everyone says “Are you all right? Do you need something?” ten times for every time I do. Again, probably testimony of my solitary life. 

 

September 8, 2020

Folly Beach

 

September 6, 2020

                The ride to Folly Beach was hedged about with traditions of people who’ve come before, where to stock up on liquor, where to have late lunch, all that. We passed by Charleston, which I longed for. I arrived in a bad mood, having convinced myself that the WiFi wouldn’t work or some unlikely thing, and made for the beach as soon as we settled in.  The beach was lovely with revelers, and far more integrated, black and white, than I remember any public beach being. I waded into the tepid Atlantic, and in one second felt anxiety draining from me into the bronze-colored waters. Lovely altogether! I was the only one to go to beach. Returned, sat on the dark balcony with the group talking about what we talk about. Slept like a child, woke to dreams in which I was berating my former colleagues for teaching badly.

 September 2, 2020

Idyllic birthday party in the garden last evening. Leland brought tiki torches.  We sat and talked until Venus, and then the first stars, came out. I wore black, and in the Facebook photographs look very small and distant. I was glad that it happened. I thought of b\Byron meeting Lord Cambridge on the road in Italy, and reaching out, invisibly, with such tender and hopeless longing. 

Between midnight and morning. . . .

 Lord, I have done ten thousand things that I might please you in one of them.